If preeminent rap-rock
jackass/backward-baseball-hat enthusiast Fred Durst and former NWA badass Ice
Cube had announced that they were making a movie together at the height of Limp
Bizkit's fame, few would have predicted that said film would be a PG, girl-powered,
inspirational football drama based on a true story. But Ice Cube long ago
traded a lucrative image as AmeriKKKa's most wanted for an even more lucrative
new persona as a kid-friendly family-comedy fixture, and Limp Bizkit hasn't
released a full-length album in five years. And for a collaboration between two
music superstars legendary for their sneering attitude, The Longshots is notable mainly for its complete
lack of edge. There's nothing about the film's workmanlike, achingly
conventional direction that says "Fred Durst." Thank God.
Ice Cube brings his usual gruff
authority to the role of a high-school football star reduced to drinking tall
cans of cheap beer and loitering around a small Illinois town where the factory
jobs left ages ago, taking optimism and dreams with them. In spite of a look
that could charitably be described as "homeless chic," Cube scores a gig
babysitting niece Keke Palmer (Akeelah And The Bee), a moody bookworm and social
outcast. But the gray cloud hovering over the depressive pair begins to lift
once Cube discovers that his niece boasts a cannon for an arm and a surprising
gift for football. Hey, if a mule can kick field goals, there's no reason a
girl can't lead a Pop Warner team to glory.
Durst and screenwriters Nick Santora
and Doug Atchison give their heartwarming true story the obligatory Hollywood
gloss, and the overbearing score hammers home every emotion. Still, Cube and
Palmer have a nice, unforced chemistry, and Durst opens up the story so that
it's as much about a struggling town as a family on the comeback trail. The
Longshots is a
sports movie like every other, but the excellent, lived-in performances of Cube
and Palmer make it a mildly affecting look at a plucky young woman who
threatens to give "throwing like a girl" a good name.